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Naomi Sims, First Black Supermodel, Dies
Naomi Sims, whose appearance as the first black model on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal in November 1968 was a consummate moment of the Black is Beautiful movement, died Saturday in Newark. She was 61. She died of cancer, said her son, Bob Findlay. Sims is sometimes referred to as the first black supermodel. “Naomi was the first,” the designer Halston told The New York Times in 1974. “She was the great ambassador for all black people. She broke down all the social barriers.” (Continue Reading…)

New Campaign Aims to Promote Black Child Adoption
Rosemary Armstrong fondly recalls the first time she met her daughter Micayla, then 2, at her foster home. The African-American toddler screamed when the caseworker tried to pick her up, but she happily sat on Armstrong’s lap and smiled. Micayla didn’t talk at all to most people, but during their second meeting, she started communicating: “It was ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’ from day one,” Armstrong says. “It was so fast.” Armstrong and her husband, Terry, also African-American, decided to adopt from foster care after discovering they could not have a child biologically. (Continue Reading…)

Jackson’s Mother Wins Kids’ Custody Despite Drama
The wishes Michael Jackson expressed in his will began to come into reality Monday during a lengthy court hearing, with his mother placed firmly in charge of rearing his children and the two men he designated still at the reins of his financial empire. As a media frenzy buzzed outside, a surprise motion from Jackson’s longtime dermatologist injected some drama inside the courtroom: An attorney for the doctor, Arnold Klein, tried to enter objections to the parenting of Jackson’s children. Klein has had a lengthy part in Jackson’s story line. He not only served as Jackson’s doctor, but one of his employees, Deborah Rowe, married Jackson in 1996 and gave birth to two of the singer’s children. Most recently, Klein’s medical records have been subpoenaed as part of the police investigation of Jackson’s death. (Continue Reading…)

1. A state of being equally balanced; equilibrium; — as of moral, political, or social interests or forces.
2. Counterbalance.

I cannot see how the unequal representation which is given to masses on account of wealth becomes the means of preserving the equipoise and the tranquillity of the commonwealth. — Edmund Burke, “Reflections on The Revolution In France”